The loss of a child, through my journey of grief and mental health.

Main menu

Category Archives: Blame

Post navigation

I hope you are ok? Mummy is missing you so much. Mummy is finding it so hard at the moment, it’s so hard to live without you. It has been 15 short months since you went to live in your new home. 15 months is longer than you lived for. 15 months isn’t very long in the context of a lifetime, well not mine at least. 15 months is long enough, what is 15 years going to feel like, or 50. I hope by then I’m with you. I hate this sweetheart I really do. I can’t remember the last time I was happy. The last time I really laughed so hard. I can’t remember the last time that I didn’t have a care in the world.

Losing you is the hardest fight that I will ever have to face, and it is a fight. The constant urge of wanting and needing to give in is prevalent. I am but one breath from being with you, but that feels like a lifetime away, well it is a lifetime. It is probably a good job that we don’t have on/off switches. I would have flicked that switch a long time ago, to end this part of my life in purgatory, and to spend the rest of my time, with you. Only with you. Well not just with you, but the two other little children, who sadly, mummy didn’t get to give birth to. See, you were so special, the little one that made it. I was honoured to share my birthday with you. You couldn’t get a more perfect gift than you.

You changed my life, you changed me as a person, you see I don’t think people realise quite how much. Before you arrived I had resigned myself to a life with no children. Growing up I was fiercely independent, I knew my mind and where I wanted to be. I grew up very quickly and left my childhood behind. Nanny and grandad worked so much, every day in fact, so I spent a lot of time with your great nanny, and auntie Joyce. But I learnt how to look after myself, I worked hard as soon as I was old enough, I did well at school, but I always did my own thing. I was the only one who really exerted control over me. When I was told at 11 years old that it was unlikely I would have my own children, I planned around it, I never grew up playing with dolls or talking about children. Even nanny and grandad didn’t think I was maternal at all, throughout my pregnancy I worried I wouldn’t be good enough, I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do, and I worried that I wouldn’t be a good mum. I remember being in labour and I said to daddy “what happens if I don’t love him, what happens if he doesn’t love me?” Daddy assured me that would never happen. Daddy was right (don’t tell him I said that), for once I have no problem standing on the tallest building and shouting, your daddy was right. My goodness I have never loved anyone or anything as much as I love you, and you loved me.

I knew how special you were, I knew then. I know now. I will always know. You were the one that allowed me to lessen the grip I held on myself, you allowed me to live with more freedom, allowing myself breathing space. You taught me there was more to life than working 24/7, you taught me that it didn’t matter if filing wasn’t done the moment the bills came through the door, you taught me that it didn’t matter if the washing didn’t get done, if the dinner wasn’t on the table at 6. I had spent the day encapsulated in our bubble of love. That is the power of love. A total force of nature. You taught me to be selfless, to be patient, to be compassionate, to love with no expectations. You taught me how to live. I owe my life to you. I owe everything to you. I gave you everything I have.

Being separated from you has ignited sheer desperation, a yearning and need that I cannot fulfill, manifesting itself as pain. The price I will pay for the rest of my life for loving you so much. That pain will only increase as the love intensifies and the ache in my arms becomes heavier. At the moment I’m not living peacefully, you probably know. You can probably see my struggle. The tears, the sleepless nights, the nightmares, flashbacks and hallucinations. You probably know that I’m not working. The visions of your broken little body now not just thoughts but tricks of my mind. I don’t like it. I can’t help it, your broken little body can appear on the windowsill as I’m sat in the office working, reflections in the mirror as I look at myself, or like the other night, I woke screaming, sweating, having had your little hand drop on mine, but not your plump, dimpled little hand that I used to hold but your stiff, cold hand, the entirely different hand that I saw after you had died. Why do I experience this, I don’t know. As much as I have experienced your waking moments, I also experienced your dying ones too. I experienced your death, and as much as your little life made the biggest impact on my life, your death did to. Your life happened, but so did your death.

What am I supposed to do without you? How am I supposed to live without you? All I want to do is come home, but I am ‘home’ but I’m not, my home is with you. We should have been making memories today, you would have been making me a card at nursery, you should have been here to see me open it, and help me eat my breakfast in bed that you and daddy made. We should have gone out and filled our day with more of those infectious smiles and laughed until our cheeks hurt, making memories. I should have heard you say ‘mummy I love you’ I should have been able to say, thank you sweetheart, I love you too. But I can’t, instead I’m sat in bed looking out of the window. I can see white smoke from the chimney across the road, make its way into the dark dusky sky, wishing I was a free spirit like the smoke, making its way into the atmosphere. I just want to be free again, but until we are together again, I know I never will be. I live everyday with the guilt, guilt that I couldn’t protect you, that somehow I didn’t do enough to save you. I hope you don’t blame mummy as much as she blames herself. The thought of letting you down, leaves me barely able to live with myself, but Daddy is doing his best to look after mummy’s broken soul.

William you allowed me to see life through different eyes, you allowed me to open my eyes and experience LIFE. William, you gave me love, a love that I didn’t know existed, you gave me love that was beyond my imagination. William, you made me a mummy, you made me your mummy, thank you. Thank you for picking me. It will always be you.

As another day draws to a close without you, another mother’s day without you, one more day closer to you. I look up to the night sky and like every other evening I say to you, goodnight sweetheart, I love you. Your mummy xxx

a feeling that an emotional or traumatic experience has been resolved.

Amongst other more trivial definitions, this is the word that is commonly used when a non-bereaved person has no idea what to say to you. At least after the funeral you might get some closure, when the inquest has finished it should give you some closure, when you have received an apology from those that failed your son, you will get some closure. Erm, no. As it says above, closure refers to the resolution of an emotional or traumatic experience. Losing a child, losing William will always leave a gaping chasm in my life that can never be resolved, fixed or even emotionally explained away. The only way to resolve my profound hurt, is for William to be alive.

The last few weeks have been a real whirlwind, what you have seen in the news, the news papers, on the internet is a representation of the way my mind is bubbling all the time. It is everything that I have been hoarding in my brain for the last 14 months, and only a small proportion of it came out in one day. It was emotionally charged and overwhelming, something that I knew I had to do. A double-edged sword. I didn’t want to be there, but I did. I didn’t want to see William’s beautiful smiling face on the TV, but I did. The most unusual bittersweet sense of pride one can feel. I didn’t want to talk about what happened to William, there’s no getting round it, and having to revisit the most traumatic day and subsequent days of my life on repeat was a difficult task to endure. But it was a sacrifice. A sacrifice I made to see my pint-sized William make a difference. And what a difference he made.

As I sit here now, finally able to sit and write, the emotions that inhibit my body, from the pit of my stomach, the waves roll through my chest, my jaw clenches as the tears flow. I have barely cried these last few weeks, well, that’s not entirely the truth, I cry everyday, I cry in the morning, some days I am already crying when I wake up. I cry in the shower, in the car, at my desk whilst writing a memo. But, I haven’t cried so loud in the shower when no-one can hear me, I haven’t cried so hard I couldn’t focus and had to stop the car. I haven’t allowed my body to let go, to heave and purge the compressed tension that sits in my soul. Initially after the media frenzy I was simply so exhausted I would just sit and stare, and then I got scared, so scared that I held it in, knowing that when it came I would not be able to control it.

But today was that day, today I opened an attachment on an email, ‘re: William Oscar Mead, Deceased’, deceased. My son is deceased. My son, my only child, my everything is dead. It is so very easy to somehow objectify your actions, to travel to London, to go on the television and talk about the failings in William’s care, so easy to talk about what needs to happen, what needs to change, to educate people and help to raise awareness of sepsis. But I did that, because my little William knows what it’s like to die, my son shouldn’t know that, and no matter how much positivity you harness, how much you empower parents, and how much awareness you raise of the catastrophic condition that took our little boys life, William is still not here. We still came back to an empty home, no mess, no toys strewn on the floor, no laughter and contagious smiles. Nothing. No William.

You get to a point, and I’m at that point where people don’t approach you with caution, people no longer ask you how you are, with a sympathetic look, worried for the answer they’ll receive. No, now, there is an expectation that when people see you that you are okay. They will ask you how your weekend was, they will engage you in conversation, or as I like to put it, small talk. My tolerance levels are no better than they were six months ago. My tolerance levels are worse, I have just become a seasoned pro at wearing the mask. When you ask me how my weekend was, it was shit. Just like every other weekend. It was shit because on Friday after work I didn’t pick William up from nursery, I didn’t flop onto the sofa with a glass of wine when William had finally succumbed to sleep. It was shit because my weekend didn’t involve trips to the park, 25 loads of washing, chasing round after a cheeky two-year old, packing him into the car with ‘plans’. I will tell you it was ‘okay’, because I can no longer be bothered to explain, people no longer really want to hear it, people are busy with their own lives, people’s lives have moved on, albeit tinged with sadness but nonetheless, their lives have evolved.

My mental health has not moved on, it has not evolved. I am no longer preparing for an inquest, I am no longer bracing myself for the next version of the NHSE report, no, I know what happened to William, although I’ve known for months, however, it is not something that I felt able or inclined to speak about publicly. We’ve had every apology we can possibly have, the doctors involved in the failings in William’s care have apologised, face to face, last week. South Western Ambulance Service (111) apologised last year. NHSE have apologised, and now Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, stood in Parliament and apologised on behalf of the NHS and the Government (see video below). But, where is William? It doesn’t bring my little boy back, it doesn’t take away the suffering he endured in those last few months, and in those last 36 hours, it doesn’t take away the guilt I feel, the blame I impose on myself, probably a form of self-harm. Control perhaps. I know it’s not my fault, I did everything I could, I sought help, I listened, I followed advice, I didn’t know what sepsis was, I didn’t know that William’s symptoms were life-threatening. But regardless it was me who took him to the people who failed my son, me. The one person that has ultimate responsibility for my son, he trusted me to protect him, trusted me to make the right decisions for him, he trusted me with his life, and as his mother I wasn’t able to do it. I was let down, let down by people and systems that are designed and are in place to help people, but until I take my last breath, the buck stops with me. No amount of changes, recommendations, lives saved, and sorry’s will ever stop me feeling that.

If you’ve ever faced a tragedy and someone tells you in any way, shape or form that your tragedy was meant to be, that it happened for a reason, that it will make you a better person, or that somehow when responsibility is taken for it, it will fix it. They are lying. Grief in all it’s forms is brutally painful. People encounter grief in many ways, when relationships fall apart, you grieve. When dreams die, you grieve. When illnesses destroy you, you grieve. These are words that I’ve uttered countless times; words that are powerful and honest they remove the foundations of anyone participating in the debasing of the grieving. Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

This video is the link to the apology William received in Parliament, if you would like to watch.

Today is a sad day, every day is a sad day, but this time last year we announced when William’s funeral would be. Instead of uploading hundreds of photos that all seemed to look identical, William covered in paper and sellotape, playing with the boxes that the toys came in, instead we were inviting people to his funeral.

Christmas, a time of year that over the centuries has evolved from its very religious beginnings, now a commercialised time of year, that we all use as an excuse to down tools and spend time with our loved ones. Who can blame you? No-one needs an excuse to see that joy on their little ones faces, that excitement of knowing Father Christmas is coming, writing a letter to Santa, leaving a mince-pie, carrot and a tipple for Santa on Christmas Eve, visiting any number of events laid on by local attractions for our children to sit on Santa’s knee, and finally that sound of tiny stomping feet and squeals of glee, when they discover Santa has been, a stocking brimming full of toys that will be played with once, a tree that is barely recognisable under the weight of all the gifts.

We had none of that. We will never have any of that. William didn’t get to learn about Father Christmas, William didn’t get to star in his first nativity, William didn’t get to write a letter to Santa, he did sit on Santa’s knee, his bear containing William’s ashes gripped tightly by Santa, but that isn’t what we imagined would be the first time William would sit on Santa’s knee. We didn’t get to track Santa’s sleigh as he visited those in the Far East before he made it to the UK, we didn’t get to buy him a personalised book from Santa. On Christmas morning we awoke to silence, no little feet stomping down the corridor, no squealing, no excited little face, no ‘mummy, daddy, he’s been’. No William.

Our floor was clear of wrapping paper, we didn’t have an obstacle course of toys littered around the house. We didn’t have a little boy to give his first brussel sprout too. We didn’t get to show him a cracker, he didn’t get to wear a party hat or a cute little outfit. We didn’t have the struggle to put him to bed, too high on the simplicity of playing with his toys. We didn’t get to pack him and 500 toys into the car to visit family and friends, where his beautiful smile would make anyone’s Christmas. No, we had nothing.

Instead we went away, we went to stay somewhere completely unfamiliar, needing to get away from the suffocation of William’s absence in our home. But, regardless of where we were, the crushing pain packed itself in our suitcase and followed us. My heart hurts, it physically hurts in my chest, it doesn’t go away when I breathe in or out, whether I lie down or stand up, whether I have a glass of wine or not. My chest is crushed, my heart aching, aching to hold my little boy on Christmas. Last Christmas William’s fragile and broken body was still with us. I held him for several hours twice on Christmas day. I cried over his beautiful presence, I held him so close, I feared I might squash him. This year, we didn’t even have that. There are very few that will understand this pain.

Paul and I stayed in a beautiful hideaway in Dartmoor National Park, there were families with children there, but we spoke to lots of couples who like us were ‘hiding’. Christmas not a happy time for them either. Some vastly wealthy couples, but grief does not discriminate, a loss of both parents recently meant one couple needed to be somewhere unfamiliar. At Christmas dinner, we had William’s teddy in a high chair, the chap on the next table ordered his parents favourite wine. Simple things, that somehow bring us closer to those loved ones we so desperately pine for. We met a U.S district judge, a man with a very powerful and influential position in society, reduced to tears by William’s story. For some Christmas isn’t a time of joy or craziness, it has become a time of painful reflection. A time that you look at your watch and hope that another hour has passed.

Every painful aspect a reminder of what should be, William would have loved the Christmas tress in every room, William would have loved splashing in the muddy puddles in his wellies, William would have loved the array of treats littered around the castle to keep the kids entertained, William would have loved afternoon tea, bitesize little sandwiches, perfect for his dinky little fingers, William would have loved to have found the stocking hanging on our door on Christmas morning, William would have loved to decorate the Christmas tree in our room, William would have loved the table magician, William would have loved the owl that sat on the reception desk, William would have loved watching the hunt as the horses and hounds made their way off the estate, William would have loved to sit in front of the grand fire by the most extravagant Christmas tree waiting for Father Christmas to call his name out to go and collect his present, William would have loved to watch the ferret racing, William would have loved the playbarn, William would have loved everything, but William was robbed of all of those things and we were robbed of William. All I wanted for Christmas was my son. Just one second, just one cuddle, just one stroke of those chubby little cheeks, just one look at that infectious smile, just one smell, just one touch. Just William. This is a wish that will never be answered.

I have felt nothing but guilt, my whole body consumed by Williams last few hours, what must my boy have been feeling, what did he want to say but couldn’t, what sort of mother am I to listen to what I was told to do, what sort of mother am I to listen to people who had no idea what they were doing, not just one person but multiple people, not just once but multiple times. The one thing I wanted to do and prided myself on was protecting my little boy, knowing that no-one could ever protect him and love him like I do. But sepsis does not discriminate, William was not unlucky, William was let down in the most unimaginable way possible. They have taken away our Christmas, our birthdays, every day, our life, our William. No manner of apology or putting right what went wrong will change anything, nothing will bring William back. Nothing can make Christmas bearable. Nothing can take away the fear, the anxiety and the guilt that any mother would feel for not somehow saving her child.

During midnight mass in the local church, William’s teddy wrapped in my embrace, I struggled to make it through the service, the tears came rolling down my cheeks, choking on the tears, the words the heart cannot speak. As I stood, I went to the vicar and I asked him to please pray with me. He held me and William, and he prayed that his little soul would be in peace and to bless his beautiful soul. He also prayed for me, William’s mummy, to find comfort. I am yet to find any. I know that day will come, I know that day will be when I get to join my son again. In a place where there are no hours, days or years, where it is eternity. Where there is peace from this suffering, where I know that I will never be separated from my darling little boy again. A place where the first thing I will do is find my son, and the second will be to never let him go again. On that day, and that day only I be happy.

I can remember back when I sat down on Thursday 18th December, 2014, and I typed into Google ‘baby coffins’, closely followed by ‘coffins for children’. It was about 4 pm and I had been awake since the 14th of December. I knew we would have to pick a coffin, but when the funeral director mentioned to us that we would need to pick one I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to search for it, I didn’t want to see it, I did not want to know. I knew I had to pick it. I knew I couldn’t delay the decision, my little boy was coming home from his post-mortem and he would need somewhere to sleep. It took all day of staring at the screen to raise my trembling hands and type those words into Google. I didn’t want to but I knew I had to, but I also knew I had to get it right, it had to be perfect, this would, after all be William’s final little bed. Rather than moving William into his toddler bed, we were preparing to encase our little boy in the most beautiful satin. A bed that once closed would never be opened again. This decision was agonising, my whole being pulled in every direction. My mind was screaming WHY, WHY, WHY, my heart was screaming NO, NO, NO but my head was trying desperately to fight to make this decision.

We did make a decision, and on Christmas Eve at 3 pm, William’s coffin arrived, and instead of taking him to sit on Father Christmas’ knee with our family, I opened the door at the funeral directors, alone, and I opened the lid, and there was my little William, the fierce pain that drove me to walk forwards, the intensity of love that allowed me to wrap my arms around my delicate little boy and lift him into my arms.

The mother in me that needed to nurture him, he was cold, he needed to be warm. Being torn in two, I didn’t want to be sat there holding my little boy like this, but I knew I needed to dress him. Paul and I had carefully picked out the little clothes that he would wear. The little baby grow, ‘Mummy’s little star’ emblazoned across the front, could not have been more perfect. He is mummy’s little star, and now he really was the brightest star in the night sky. I was shocked how hard it was to dress him, it was easier to dress William when he was wriggling all over the place, but now, he couldn’t help me, his weight so heavy in my arms. We had picked his little birthday outfit to wear. We didn’t want to let these clothes go, we wanted to hold onto them forever, but we knew that his little first birthday party was so happy, we have so many photos of William in that little outfit. So we knew we had to do it. Before doing the little button up on his chinos, I took the opportunity to poke that little bum, still so squidgy. After putting his stripey little top on, I pulled his socks on, and I couldn’t help but let out a little giggle as I talked to him, and made him promise mummy that he wouldn’t take them off. He didn’t promise, but he didn’t take them off. I wish he could. We didn’t put any shoes on him, he didn’t like shoes, the shoes he took his first steps in are now hanging on our wall at home.

The shoes of ‘those’ first steps xx

After dressing my precious little boy, I sat in the box chair, my legs over the arms, cuddling my little boy into me, so tight, and I broke, I hated this, I hated this so much but I loved it, I loved holding him, I felt safe, I felt at home, I felt like we were one. His beautiful hair was still so shiny, so much hair, I ran my fingers through it as my tears soaked their way through. The glitter still in his ear, from the little Christmas Tree he’d made us on his last day of nursery. I now knew I’d made the right decision to ask the pathologist not to wash him. I couldn’t bare to think at the time my beautiful little boy laid out in an operating theatre to be washed with cold water, but I knew I had to ask them not to, I knew I needed to see this glitter in his ear again. There it was. A painful but beautiful reminder of my little boy having fun.

When i knew William was going to have a post-mortem I toyed with the decision of whether to look at the scar. I knew I would. I had to know. I didn’t want to know, but I had to. I did look. A red raw Y right there, it was horrible, someone had touched my little boy, someone had hurt him, but I knew they hadn’t, I knew they’d been gentle, the scar, just like red pen. I spoke to the pathologist that carried out William’s post-mortem, I didn’t want to, but I had to talk to the man who had known my little William, had seen his beautiful little soul. Amongst other things, he said to me, ‘he’s simply so beautiful, such a lovely little boy’ I hated that, but I loved that, even in death he was beautiful. I had asked him not to cut or shave William’s hair, I just couldn’t bear that, to strip him of the feature that made him look like a little boy and not a baby. He didn’t, you could barely see the scar. I traced my finger along the stitches, I slowly covered them up with William’s locks, a scar never to be seen again.

William was 70 cm long when he died. Too long for a baby coffin, but too small for an infant coffin. We placed a little teddy with him to keep him company, a photo of his mummy and daddy on his chest, his arms wrapped around us both. How I wish I was going with him, to not be trapped here without him. Everyday I struggle with this inner fight. Not wanting death to separate us, I fight not to join him, knowing how precious life is, but at times, and more often than not, this fight is impossible. Living, existing, but not really wanting too, but not wanting to die either.

I didn’t want to see William this way, but I knew it was the only way that I would be able to, so I did, everyday until the day I was no longer able to. Sometimes if I was able, I visited him twice a day. Christmas Day I sat with him alone, my coat wrapped around him, his head resting on my chest, I closed my eyes, and for the first time since he fell asleep, I could fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that he was here, with me, where he belonged.

January 3rd, the day the angels came to earth and took my boy away, 9.45 am, that was the last time I ever saw my son. Ever. I couldn’t close the lid, but I did, because I knew it had to be me. How could I close the lid on my son, knowing I would never see him again. Darkness enveloped me as I stood staring at my boy for the last time, but I knew that I had to turn around and leave him. It hurts, it hurts now, it really fucking hurts. It hurts, knowing that was me, it was me who closed that lid, it was me that walked out backwards, not taking my eyes off him. It was me standing in the way of the light that would take him. In that moment I knelt on the floor and I prayed to God to take me too. I begged him, like I begged William to wake up, our cheeks touching, as I wailed on the floor next to him. God didn’t listen and he wasn’t listening now, if he was he wasn’t doing much about it. It’s not his fault though, I know that. There is one person who the ultimate responsibility for William falls, and that is me, one of the biggest conflicts of all. I know it wasn’t my fault, I know that, I would have, and still would do anything to put breath back in his body, but I couldn’t save him. I tried, I fought so hard. I fought with every ounce of my body and my soul to get him the help he needed, but he didn’t get it. There are people out there who know this and they will live with this knowledge for the rest of their lives. But they don’t have to live without their son, they don’t know what it feels like to blame yourself but also to know it’s not your fault, they don’t know the pain of finding their child, dead. They don’t know the pain of picking their child’s coffin, they don’t know the heartache of picking the last outfit their child will ever wear, and they will never know the pain of closing that lid and walking backwards out of a room, never to ever see their child again. I will never forgive them.

So you see, every moment is a fight, every moment is painful, every step hurts. Every breath is taken wishing it was your last, but knowing that it’s not. And i can tell you that the more you love, the more you fall. And I have fallen, I’m still falling, at a million miles an hour.

Today I answered a question when submitting content for a book, What is your definition of hope? No-one has asked me this question, nor have I spoken of hope. This word has peppered so many conversations since William died, but never mentioned by myself, because what do I hope for? Honestly, I hope that when I close my eyes tonight, it is for the last time. That when I wake it is with William.

My desire to be with William constantly squares up to the pain that I feel. A daily battle, there is no choice, there is no mercy, no resolve. The only desire I have is for William to be here with me. My life dictated by this desire, some days the hope of not waking for another day over-rides the pain, the hope that tomorrow might not happen. Other days, the pain paralyses me in its unforgiving grip. You see, the only desire i have, will never happen, not ever. Stripped of this desire leaves me with nothing apart from the hope that tomorrow is the first day of my eternal life with William.

Have you tried to live without hope? It doesn’t matter what I have in my life, a good man, a good job, wonderful family and friends, the list is endless, but it’s not William, my son, my world, my life. There is nothing that I wouldn’t sacrifice including my own life to give William his, to give him the chance to breathe, to love, to grow, to learn, to live the life that we gave him. Everything pails into insignificance, there are no variable factors, there is nothing that I would rather have in my life than the opportunity to be with William. I am focusing on William’s Legacy, I am busy, I do work, I am fundraising, I am doing my degree, but these are not reasons to stay here, these are not hope. They are part of a life that I have been left with, not by choice, but forced upon me.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is I would like you to try to understand the difference between your hope and the hope of a bereaved parent.

You hope that your child will sleep through the night so you can get a few hours sleep. I hope that I don’t sleep, because sleep induces nightmares of the day that I found William in his cot, never to wake again.

You hope you’re doing the right thing, the guilt that disciplining your child brings. I hope that William doesn’t blame me, I hope he doesn’t wonder why I couldn’t save him, the burden of guilt I carry, a heavy weight around my neck, always.

You hope that your child’s first day of school goes smoothly, hope they will be full of smiles when they greet you at the end of the school day. I hope that one day I will get to actually see my child again, hope that I get to see William with my own eyes.

You hope that as your child grows up, makes friends, becomes more independent, that they return to you when they need a hug. I hope that one day I will be able to hold my baby again, physically, be able to smell him, to touch him and to never have to ever let go.

You hope that when your child has flown the nest, you secretly hope they have washing they need to bring home so you get to see them, hope they come home for a meal. I hope that William will be waiting for me, when I arrive in Heaven.

Hope for me is defined as being relieved of the sheer pain that emanates from my heart daily, but knowing this will never happen until I am with my baby again. Hope is that one day people will understand William isn’t replaceable, I don’t want another child, I want the child I had. Hope is that there is more understanding and compassion in a world that can feel so harsh and isolating.

Hope is knowing that one day, I will close my eyes and when I open them, I am with my forever child. I hang onto this. This is my only hope, and I hope that day is tomorrow.